An engaging documentary on the life and work of Vladimir Nabokov. It contains a lot of archival footage of interviews with the man
himself and covers topics from lepidoptery to Lolita.The narrator Stephen
Smith interviews Martin Amis and contemporary literary critics to identify the
character of the man and the underlying moral message of his Magnum opus. Though I enjoyed it, I'm not quite sure if Nabokov would have approved: there is a heavy strain of criticism as psychoanalysis, art as didacticism throughout the film.

In short, he so busied himself in his books
that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak
and the days from dawn till dark;
and so from little sleep and much reading his brain dried
up
and he lost his wits. - Miguel De Cervantes.

The notion of a
‘public sphere’, developed in the work of Jürgen Habermas (1974), is an
important touchstone for social theorists of democracy and public life. It has given rise to a critical literature
that engages with the concept of a ‘public sphere’ and seeks to assess its
historical validity and contemporary relevance. This discussion has developed
parallel to wider debates on the public/private distinction, the
interrelationship between the public realm and private life , and the
organization of public and private spaces. The present review will group the literature
in terms of approach and delineate common points of analysis and areas of
contestation, moving onto a detailed analysis of selected texts that can offer
guidance for future research on the contemporary utility of the concept of the ‘public
sphere’.

“[T]he United States also has undergone a less sanguine transformation:
its citizens have become remarkably less civic, less politically engaged, less
socially connected, less trusting, and less committed to the common good. At the dawn of the millennium Americans are
fast becoming a loose aggregation of disengaged observers, rather than a
community of connected participants.” -Robert D. Putnam, ‘Civic Disengagement in Contemporary America’.
Putnam’s thesis is that American
society has undergone a decline in social capital and civic engagement, caused
by a declining rate of generational replacement, technological innovations, spatial
reorganization of cities and the growth of suburban developments. Social capital refers to the networks and
social resources people draw upon in their quotidian lives for support, and it
has been positively correlated with better health, wealth and political
outcomes for individuals and communities.
Despite recognised benefits, Putman argues, since th…

In
the social sciences, the selection of research design and its constituent
elements is an important phase of the research process. The choice of research design is subject to a
number of theoretical and methodological considerations. Within the
discipline of sociology, there exists a high level of theoretical and
methodological pluralism with competing approaches to the study of society
being pursued simultaneously which often gives rise to contention and
contestation over the relative value of approaches. While quantitative research
has relatively well-established principles of evaluation, appraisal of qualitative
research is highly contentious. Carter and Little (2007) have suggested that
consistency of research design is an important criterion via which to evaluate qualitative
research: epistemology, methodology and
methods have to be internally consistent in order to form a solid research
design. Adoption of a particular epistemological stance can affect researcher’s
methodo…

In contemporary Western societies, since the mid to late 20th century, there have been considerable debates around the status of the family, its perceived decline or transformation into a new historical form. Talcott Parsons’ original formulation of the nuclear family has fallen out of fashion, outmoded by contemporary social trends and criticised for teleological biases that preference one model of family and designate all other forms as deviant and dysfunctional. Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim have put forth their “‘individualization thesis”’ to explain shifts in contemporary society and the institution of the ‘family’ that elevate individuals to the forefront of discussion. The individualization thesis has been widely discussed and misunderstood. Jennifer Mason criticised the individuation thesis on the basis that it “creates a sense of individuals floating free of family ties and commitments”. However, Beck-Gernsheim has stressed that individualization: “does not …

The role and importance of migration within the British Empire throughout the 19th century cannot be overstated.Migration during this period fell into two major categories: white settlement and tropical migration.Emigration from the British Isles sustained and powered the expansion of settler colonies, from Canada to Australia and New Zealand.Whilst, tropical migration allowed the Empire to maintain and expand its plantation colonies after the abolition of the slave trade in 1834. Both forms of migration informed British engagement with the world and helped to shape Imperial policy.In the Oxford History of the British Empire, Andrew Porter argued that the British Empire could be divided into three categories; the Empire of White Settlement, the Empire of India and the Empire of the Conquered.The category of Empire that a colony fell under determined the form of government that London imposed or accepted, somewhere between responsible self-government and autocracy, and these categories…

In the 1832 Report of the Colebrooke Commission, Mr. C.H. Cameron outlined his view that Ceylon represented: “the fittest spot in our Eastern Dominions in which to plant the germ of European Civilization”. Ceylon had been unified under British control between 1796 and 1815, and remained relatively stable throughout its occupation, bar the Kandyan rebellions of 1817-1818 and 1848. Unlike India and the rebellion of 1857, maintenance of British control of Ceylon did not pose a significant headache for the Colonial Office beyond the initial invasion of Kandy. The later instability of 1848 was quickly remedied and provided important lessons for the administration of Ceylon. However, the administrative apparatus of the Island was largely in place by the first decade of the 19th century and further reforms were carried on through the 1830s to the 1840s, remaining the purview of the Ceylon Civil Service throughout British Occupation. Though expanded in the late 1830s, the Ceylon Civil Servic…